You have heard of Stephanie Meyer, right? She’s a mom who doesn’t live on either coast that grew up reading Jane Austen but likes Orson Scott Card, too.

Oh yeah, she wrote this small little book called Twilight, as well. Anyway, I wonder if there is something she can teach us about what it means to be a writer? After all, anybody who can get teens to line up in front of bookstores waiting for the stroke of midnight to hit so that they can get their hands on their latest 700 page release (no pictures, either) might have something valuable to say about the act of writing for young adults, no?

Here’s what she said about what’s next for her?

Is it the purchase of a private island? A yachting trip around the globe? Perhaps she wants to buy an NFL football team? (Okay, I am projecting here.) So, what’s next for someone with the immense success of Stephanie Meyer in their back pocket?

Well, more writing, of course. She says…

I plan to then write Midnight Sun, which is Twilight told from Edward’s perspective. After that, I may write some sequels for The Host, or a may pull another outline from my files to play with. I won’t stop writing; there are too many stories I want to tell.

For writers, the joy is in the work. There is almost no real end goal, no one book that ever gets completed so that, “Well, that’s enough… I’ve done all there is I want to do.”

If there’s still ink the pen, writers want to write. Teachers are kind of like that as well. I mean we never say, “Well, Jimmy now knows how to align his subjects with his verbs so my work in this profession is done.”

We look for more ways to work with Jimmy. Or Janet or Cindy or Michael or Todd.

Cause there is always more to do when the work you are doing is meaningful.

Make your work meaningful and your job won’t really feel like a job at all… but rather it will feel like an aspect of your personhood that resonates with purpose.

That’s may sound all new age and flakey but it’s not. It’s what makes getting up in the morning – at least, for me – feel rewarding instead of dreadful.

Whenever any other adult walks into my classroom, things change. Why? Cause classrooms are fishbowls and when a new species enters the tank, the environment changes.

Sure, in some ways, things will revert back to normal. Especially if I, at the front of the room, keep an even keel, and keep rolling on with business as usual. (Which I usually do. I have sort of given up on dog and pony shows a long time ago… but when you are a young teacher and you think that your job is on the line when a “boss” walks in, you get tense and start ascending Bloom’s taxonomy as if climbing this academic Kilimanjaro was the only thing ever that you were hired to do. What? The VP is coming? Quick kids, start to SYNTHESIZE!!! It’s such a joke.)

However, kids who are normally energetic and enthusiastic will clam up and in my experience, the “high end” of class gets lost – or at least tamped down. Sure, a few of the most bubbling personalities will still participate and share their “voice” with the room but most kids will — especially when there are people in suits or business attire in the class — remain in their own little quiet, one-word response bubble.

Classes where the teachers don’t have classroom management though… they are often exposed. I mean a teacher that can’t get Jimmy to sit down when the principal is not in the room is a teacher that feels embarrassed and threatened when the VP is in the room watching Jimmy defy classroom protocol.

But the thing is, the VP’s often look at the teacher as if it’s “the educator’s” fault that Jimmy won’t sit down, be quiet and do some work. Why the VP doesn’t enter the room with the attitude that, “Hey, this is my school and I am here to support the teachers and if Jimmy won’t get on the bus, I need to do something about Jimmy,” is beyond me.

Uhm, maybe, the teacher could use some back-up?

But no, VP’s enter the room looking for “our” problems… as if the problems they see in their teachers’ rooms are not “their” problems as well.

Goodness how I’d love to see the tables turned on this one though. I mean how great would it be to see the entire school board walk into my VP’s office? I wonder if she would carry on in the same way as she would if it was just a P.E. teacher who had popped by.

And I wonder if they had only spent 7 minutes in her office (with a check sheet in hand, of course — the rubric for good Vice Principalling… I mean who hasn’t memorized that?) if she would feel as if she was being fairly evaluated and assessed by her “bosses”.

No notice. No prior awareness of what was even on the check sheet. Just BOOM! a surprise little visit. In, then out, then gone… the only lasting impression being an air of slight disapproval from each of the Board Members.

Of course, this folly bleeds upwards. Why? Because instead of supporting her, they come in with an attitude of “looking for her faults”. And she thinks to herself, “If you know so much, then you trying doing this damn job!”

Don’t you just love how everyone feels as if they can do your job better than you can do it yourself? Parents, principals, kids, they all think, What schmoe couldn’t do a better job than the schlub they currently have in room 6213?

And when I look at the work my school board does, my VP does, the science and math and history and P.E. teachers do, I pretty much think the same thing, don’t I.

Yep, I am a hypocrite. Don’t judge me but I will judge you.

Ya gotta love school mentality, right?